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The role of Habitat in the Total Housing

Scheme

Habitat Technology Group was selected to be in charge of implementing the total housing scheme in 2 districts, in Kollam under the name of the "Janakeeya Parpida Padhathi "(Total housing scheme) and in Trivandrum along with COSTFORD and the Nirmiti Kendra.

In 1998, under the Kollam District Panchayat (local government body), HTG undertook to provide the total technical support for the building of fifty five thousand houses, corresponding to 55,000 beneficiary families in a period of three years. Kollam was divided into 150 clusters and local self governments were formed. Habitat's role in the whole process was that of a facilitator, between the government, the beneficiaries, the building material suppliers and all the other stakeholders. As, Mr. Shankar was a member of the Executive Committee of the Trivandrum Development Authority and the Task Force on Housing of the Government of Kerala, Habitat has been promoting this campaign in different levels.

Mr. Shankar helped the Government in establishing a price freeze and encouraged the building material manufacturers and suppliers to co-operate.

As there were not enough trained workers in the districts for the huge amount of construction, HTG unleashed a series of ‘bare-foot mason's and engineer's' training programmes and training camps on basics cost effective technologies. HTG provided intensive training to 200 engineers from the Kollam district, who in turn were in charge of training “barefoot” engineers at the grass root level. They were able to train thousands of people at the training camps organised in accordance with the local Panchayat.

HTG also developed and helped publish the training materials in the form of a book, which included topics such as Habitat literacy, appropriate materials and technologies that are cost effective, eco friendly and energy efficient, architectural designing including a set of plans, environmental and energy conservation and other issues relevant to the campaign. It also included estimates of some prototypical designs and plans, in order to generate a basic awareness in the grassroots people about the building cost. This book was also printed in the local language, namely, Malayalam. The whole idea as per Mr. Shankar was to attempt to bring technology closer to the people who generally are intimidated by complex technological matters.

As a part of the campaign, it organised surveys on the housing situation. In the design process, Habitat attempted to give a voice to every single beneficiary for the planning of his houses according to his specific needs. For example in the tribal village in Attapaddy, Habitat has attempted to try to evolve as many different designs as possible for the houses, which suit the specific family structure and occupations. For Mr. Shankar it was of prime importance to see that the buildings were a package of functionality and aesthetics. He firmly believes in the idea of Social Engineering, wherein beauty is a by-product of the entire structural engineering exercise. Only then can the people develop a sense of identity with their habitats.

Habitat undertook the activity of supervision of the various building phases very seriously, ensuring as much as possible the correct implementation of technology and stringent quality control. The responsibility of the success of the new technologies depended on HTG, as they were one of the organisations who emphasised on the use of these technologies. Failure of the technologies or buildings meant an assured rejection from the people.

Up to 2001, when the communist party fell out of power, HTG was able to build 28,000 to 30,000 buildings, about 60% of the total targeted amount.